iFabbo Social Media Conference Recap

Outfit Details: Top: Madewell via Crossroads Trading Company/Tank: Yummie Tummie/Pants: Urbana Outfitters/Shoes: Target

This past Saturday was the iFabbo Social Media Conference.  I have to say, it was a fantastic event!  They brought together a wide array of new brands (BooHoo.com! Dermalogica! Becca Cosmetics! Lotus Premium Denim), engaging speakers (Tracy Sun from Poshmark! Marlena Stell from Makeup Geek! Christina Martinez from Luvocracy! Susan Yara from New Beauty Magazine! Annemarie Frank from HSN!) and super fun fellow bloggers -- all of whom made the whole thing super duper fun.

I'm not a Redditor, so I'm going to knowingly do this wrong.  Here's the TL;DL key take away of the conference:

Be authentic and use your voice on your blog.  Actually engage your users and, of course, keep creating content!

And you know, while this sounds like "duh" advice, it was amazing how consistently these different speakers and brands with wildly different backgrounds drove this message home. 

From Right to Left: 1. Plaid dress from BooHoo.com/ 2. Trying on Google Glass/ 3. BooHoo Display/ 4. My Skin Map from Dermalogica/ 5. The "Future of Fashion and Beauty" Panelists/ 6. Close up of my outfit pants and shoes (hehe)

And for those that are still interested, here's the highlights: 

• Bloggers are better en masse.  It's significantly better to band together to work with brands than to try to step on each other.  No YouTube trolling! (On a related note, anyone want to band together with me? :D)
• Quality readers are better than quantity of readers.  How often do your readers engage?  Can you motivate them to do things?  This is what makes brands notice you. 
• Personality and Authenticity is extremely important.  There's something endearing about being a liiiiittle bit weird with your content. 
• On taking pictures on your phone vs. a DLSR: Sometimes the best camera is the camera that you have.  
• You can get Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop on Creative Cloud for 9.99 a month - yay tools! 
• As a blogger, disclose all relationships with brands.  It can be something as simple as getting swag from a store -- ensure it's clear that you were given something to avoid legal trouble. 
• One way to get more following is to jump on a social media platform in its infancy.  Many of the big bloggers and vloggers got their start when YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram were just starting. 
• Engage with others - Find a community with the same interests as you! Reply to every single on of your comments.  Comment on other blogs! 

Honestly, there were tons more good tidbits, but this is what I took away.   Apparently iFabbo is replaying the conference on Spreecast if you missed it.  Check it out here.

Thanks to all the fantastic people that put this together -- it was a great learning experience!

Did you go to the iFabbo Social Media Conference? What did you learn?  Share in the comments?

Thanks for stopping by!